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I was writing an answer that exceeded the 30,000 character limit by a few hundred characters. I began trimming off characters until I got it to exactly 30,000 characters. But lo and behold, when I tried to post it I got an error message telling me that it is 185 characters above the limit:

Screenshot of error message

Yet when I add a character and let the message update it tells me that there are only 30,001 characters:

Screenshot of error message

When I remove the added character the error message goes away. But as soon as I click "post" it comes right back saying that I'm over the limit by 185 characters.

If I leave the additional character (so that the message tells me that I am one character above the limit) and then click "post", it brings me back to the box and the number has somehow changed to 30,186:

Screenshot of error message

One of these messages seems to be lying to me.

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  • 4
    The delete key use are using is not really a delete key, but it inserts the characters 12345678912345678912345678912345678912345678912345678\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b which has a length of 187 and just deletes the character (length of 1) but takes up that many chars. 187 - 1 is 186, which if you add 30000 gets you your new limit. No lying, just internal stuff that exisits for a reason. :)
    – Eb946207
    Commented Jan 11, 2019 at 2:37
  • 13
    The only question I have now is, what kind of weird Jewish furniture store sells a maimonidesk?
    – Nathan Tuggy
    Commented Jan 11, 2019 at 6:17
  • 4
    @Ethan K: That ought to be posted as an answer.
    – This_is_NOT_a_forum
    Commented Jan 11, 2019 at 6:47
  • @EthanK I'm not sure I fully understand that, but in any case it adds 185 characters even without me deleting anything. As you can see from the final two screenshots the 185 characters got added merely from clicking "post" even without deleting anything.
    – Alex
    Commented Jan 11, 2019 at 14:11
  • 1
    @Alex It was a joke. It is the same as \b (a backspace) but takes up 187 characters.
    – Eb946207
    Commented Jan 11, 2019 at 22:43
  • [exhibit a]
    – Dr. Shmuel
    Commented Jan 13, 2019 at 4:21
  • Can you post your raw body of your post somewhere, so we can check it to see the cause?
    – Ferrybig
    Commented Jan 14, 2019 at 7:49
  • @Ferrybig I can’t post it here as it would exceed the character limit. But Dr. Shmuel linked it in his comment above.
    – Alex
    Commented Jan 14, 2019 at 18:10
  • IIRC, I've seen that behavior when commenting.
    – Mike Waters
    Commented Jan 20, 2019 at 21:37
  • 1
    @MikeWaters Regarding the comment character limit? I've never had this problem for that.
    – Alex
    Commented Jan 20, 2019 at 21:38
  • Alex, in comments you need to add a space character to trigger a correct recalculation, adding non-space characters (in a comment, at least) simply continues to add to the incorrect value until a clear space (and new word is started). ---- Maybe it works the same way for posts (which should have been saved on the site where you were writing last, if you didn't make another post afterwards), so you can test if it works.
    – Rob
    Commented Nov 5, 2019 at 17:19

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